Women's Paradoxical Roles

Much of our discussion today with the Young Program coordinators of the Dalit Foundation as well as with the editors of Insight magazine centered around the role of women in the Dalit movement. Today's meetings were more informal roundtable-style meetings where the dialogue was punctuated, for a change, with an opportunity for us to ask the members of both groups a variety of questions we had, and it ended up focusing on the many roles of Dalit women. One of the most fascinating dichotomies that came into play was that Dalit women are at the forefront of the Dalit movement, with strong views and a growing confidence in publicly articulating the discrimination they have faced and coming up with ideas to combat these problems. It is interesting to contrast this notion with the lack of similar involvement by women in the Black movement in the United States, where racial problems are often framed to be more of an issue of masculinity than of affecting both men and women as a whole.
However, when dealing with other issues that Dalit women face, such as being the primary targets of retaliation for intercaste arguments, and being unable to access justice in the legal system to remedy these kinds of atrocities that have been committed against them, such as gang-rape and beatings, it brings into focus a kind of paradox in the lives of many Dalit women, particularly in the rural areas. Although they may be the centers of their communities, with the ability to influence and effect changes specifically for women as well as the movement as a whole, without an ability to acess justice for themselves as individuals, they cannot adequate fulfill their roles as leaders. Perhaps this paradox is the manifestation of the ideal (women as leaders) in conjunction with reality (women as targeted victims), and is a concept that must continue to be examined and questioned in order for these two differing views to be reconciled.